Blackstone Group

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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby utopiate » Wed Sep 18, 2013 7:02 pm

Everything that follows is from Enterprise Corruption...funny stuff.


How many ways can a corporate (Direct Marketing) spokesman/privacy invasion cheerleader reiterate that their privacy policy was worthless?

These lines are really not far from the truth.

“We have never done what we planned on doing.”

“We have never done what we did since our policy change yesterday.”

“We have always had an opt-in policy since yesterday.”

“Starting yesterday we have been completely honest with the public.”

“We won’t sell personal information to our newest partners.”

“If we are tracking you we don’t want to know about it.”

“We promise we never did it and we promise we won’t do it again.”

“Our intention wasn’t our intention as soon as you found about it.”

“We did not do what you caught us doing.”

” We promise not to do what we are doing.”

“We guarantee that parts of our policy pretend to protect privacy.”

“Our policy and terms and conditions makes it crystal clear we are accountable.. for nothing whatsoever.”

“We stopped it a soon as we got caught.”

“You have had zero privacy anyway and we forgot to include that fact in our privacy policy.”

“Your” “Privacy” “Is” “Important” “To” “Us”

“We” “Only” “Share” “Your” “Personal” “Information” “With” “Our” “Affiliates”

“We are so proud of what it is we promised we were not interested in doing.”

“The fine print explains the fact that the reader can’t possibly understand the policy.”

“We have succeeded in doing what we promised we weren’t doing.”

“What we do with your private information is highly confidential.”

“The fact that it became published indicates we didn’t ‘educate’ the media well enough.”

“Our disclaimers made it perfectly clear we were lying.”

“We can’t comment on the fraud we commit due to our strict privacy policy.”

“Our advertisements clearly state that our product does not invade privacy. You have our word on that.”

“We are tracking your every move to ensure your privacy.”

“Your privacy is important to us, that is why we track your every move/purchase.”

“We need to know more about you for your privacy.”

“We got caught and we are pained that it became public knowledge.”

“We despise the tactics we are about to implement.”

“Our policy clearly states, we despise the tactics we’ve implemented.”

“Our biggest mistake is that we were way to open about our deceptive business practices.”

“Just read our No-Privacy Policy.”

“Apparently our computer system was unaware of our privacy policy.”

“Our computer has declined to comment at this juncture.”

I don’t know if you all remember but that is what the privacy debate of the 1990s was really like.

And it was at least that absurd.
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby utopiate » Wed Sep 18, 2013 7:18 pm

Here's more...
<edited to remove his personal subscription plug towards the end>

“INSTITUTIONS OF MANAGEMENT AND ASSIMILATION 101″

Part 3

LABOR IS BEING MANAGED AND ASSIMILATED.. INTO POVERTY

That title needs to be repeated.. often.

Labor is being managed and assimilated into poverty.

I’m going to be repeating this fact several times throughout this essay because it is.. what it is … a fact.. and there are only two ways I see anything getting remotely better for labor or the so-called 99% which I believe to be a pretty appropriate term.

One: Labor has to begin to become much less tolerant of mass-corruption on the part of management (and that won’t happen because America’s “institutions of assimilation” have and continue to assimilate labor into trusting and believing that management acts in labor’s best interest) or..

Two: Labor (the 99%) has to begin to turn the tables on management, invade the privacy of management, proactively and successfully profile the behavior of:

One: The world’s institutions of management and..

Two: The world’s institutions of assimilation

But the government is going to solve labor’s poverty problems for labor and the ordinary citizen right?

After all, aren’t they the so-called “public servants” that they advertise themselves as being?

Here is where awareness of “institutions of management” becomes important.

The simple truth?

Government, irrespective of the form of government is nothing less or more than an “institution of management”.

Government does not exist to do financial favors for labor.

Contrary to what the institutions of assimilation tell us institutions of management do not act in labor’s best interest.

Government exists to bring cost of labor down to the lowest level achievable and the corporate behavior that occurred between 1992 and 2003 is probably one of the best possible examples of that.

So don’t hold your breath waiting for management to elevate labor out of the condition of poverty that management intentionally put labor into.

“MANAGEMENT” AND “ASSIMILATION”

One more time.

“Management” and “assimilation”

“Assimilation” being sometimes referred to as “social constructivism”, “vocational education”, “conditionalization” or “cognitive psychology” but I’ll be using “assimilation” throughout this writing.

In the last few months I’ve been focusing on and will continue to focus on the art and science of the identification and profiling of institutions of management and institutions of assimilation.

WHY?

Why is awareness and comprehension of institutions of management and assimilation important?

Why am I currently focusing so tightly on “institutions of management” and “institution of assimilation”.

Why do ‘institutions of management” and “institutions of assimilation” and the recognition of both matter to society, the world and the well being of the individual?

Another way of saying it: Why does the activity and behavior of the 1% matter to the 99%?

Here is why and this is important.

The assimilation culture and assimilation society that we are living in and observing dozens if not hundreds of times daily through television and most other forms of institutional media is sending an unmistakable message that management has got labor troubles and labor troubles induce Enron-style accounting behavior on the part of the world’s institutions of management.

That is very important.

As I move further into this essay I’m going to answer a more important and much more optimistic question which is also important.

Why does the predictable activity and predictable behavior of institutions of management and institutions of assimilation matter to the individual, the ordinary worker and the “outside” investor?

Again, another way of saying it. Why does the predictable activity and predictable behavior of the 1% matter to the 99%?

Management’s future motives, objectives and goals are no different than management’s past motives, objectives and goals.

In other words future financial and white-collar crime and corruption is no different than past financial white-collar crime and corruption.

What management was doing then.. management is doing now.. for exactly the same reasons.

HOW TO EXPLOIT THE PRIVACY DIVIDE

The “how I did it” part of my September 15 2008 market prediction began in 1993.

In 1993 at the start of the internet and world wide web boom I began my journey of knowledge and awakening by taking an interest in the subject of privacy, the fourth amendment, the constitution and history.

Privacy was a huge topic during the role-out of the world wide web in the 1990s and in 2013 privacy is once again a hot topic and will probably remain so until Snowden runs out of leaks and then the next Snowden will come along and the subject of privacy will again become hot.

Interestingly and not coincidentally the subject of privacy was and still is the foundation of my eventual market observations and it led to some accurate prediction making.

I highly recommend that folks take an interest in the subject of privacy and the constitution and the bill of rights because when people ask “how I did it?” that is an important component if not THE most important component of “how I did it”.

Everyone wants to “do it” and the ability to make accurate predictions is very advantageous to personal and financial decision making.

I’ve proven it can be done and with a little guidance on my part I believe anyone can do it.

Guidance on instructing others how to do it is the primary motivation, objective and goal of my business and my three websites.

EXACTLY WHAT DID OCCUR BETWEEN 1992 AND 2003?

How did the 1990s get started?

Based on obsessive and extensive human resource calculations the world’s institutions of management quickly came to the realization that (due to the nascent “information revolution”) management had one of the largest labor problems looming on the horizon that management had ever experienced in the history of labor and management.

Anticipated labor problems so big, so destructive and so disruptive that management reluctantly chose to allow a 120-year accounting institution called Arthur Anderson to fall on the proverbial sword.

Think about that for a second.

Arthur Anderson had been through and survived how many wars and how many market crashes in its lifespan but it couldn’t handle the boom and bust of the information age revolution.

That in itself should make obvious the massive labor problem management thought if was facing.

So in the early 1990s management and the thinkers in the think tanks came to the frightening and disturbing realization that management had to urgently upgrade the infrastructure of the entire globe and they had to do it fast.

Faster than any previous round of foreign nation building throughout the history of foreign nation building.

So, to solve management’s labor problem.. in mid-1992 India underwent something called “economic reform” which is management code for “upgrade our infrastructure and do it fast” and at the very same time the Commodity Futures Exchange Commission began a 20-year promise not to enforce securities laws.

This was not a coincidence.

What it was.. was two huge economic indicators that would have been nice to have been aware of at the time.

There is probably nothing more profitable than several years of advance knowledge of an Enron.

This is why my enronnext101.wordpress.com website and the recognition of The Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts, Apollo Global Management and The Carlyle Group and much of the rest of the private equity industry as the foundation of the next Enron is as important and valuable as it is.

In short what transpired between 1992 and 2003?

Everybody simultaneously (including all five major accounting firms) forgot how to count money .. all at once at the very same time and the very same way and to top it off somehow as unbelievable as it may seem they all did it without any guidance, instruction, conspiracy or coordination whatsoever.

?

The major corrupt companies of the 1990s had at least two things in common.

1. They were all engaged in foreign nation building.

2. They all engaged in foreign nation building that started at the same time and ended at the same time.

That also was not a coincidence.

That was management showing their cards.

But nobody other than the insiders saw the cards because the planning and coordination for the foreign nation building projects around the globe took place behind closed doors.. secretly.. privately.

And now we are back to the subject of privacy.

Without privacy.. the institutions of management could not have pulled this off.

In other words the 1% can’t pull their usual tricks.. without privacy.

In 2008 by going public with my predictions.. I made one of the first important steps that the 99% need to make in the removal of management’s privacy.

In the early 2000s I discovered that predictability was the number one enemy of the powers-that-be and the ruling class which I also believe to be pretty appropriate terms.

And in October of 2007 and March 15 2008 I knew it and in September 2008 I proved it.

This is what happens when the powers that be.. become predictable.

The future is predictable if one understands and comprehends objectives, motives.. and goals of the powers-that-be.

This time, this Enron we can act upon and profit from my research and now your awareness of the last Enron which ultimately is the beauty of figuring out the last Enron and the top-twenty virtually identical Enrons before that.

It is all about predictable corporate behavior.

I consider myself to be a corporate corruption specialist.

And now I specialize in the profiling and prediction of “unlikely” corporate “misdeeds” and corporate “misbehavior”.

Corporations on the verge of corruption or engaged in corruption want to be left alone and out of the public eye.

Such corporations do not want to be examined, profiled, suspected, targeted and shadowed.

Sure, as consumers and individuals we’ve lost our privacy to big business and big government and there is not much we can do about it but what we can do is aggressively and continuously invade the privacy of potentially corrupt corporations and individuals profiled for possible corruption therefore reducing individual financial risk through awareness, knowledge and wisdom gained.

Knowledge of the past is very empowering.

Knowledge of the unvarnished truth about the past is very empowering.

Unchangeable corporate behavior is also predictable corporate behavior.

It is time to start cashing in on corporate information and the removal of corporate privacy.

I call it corporate profiling.

The profiling of business plans and business models based on past and present demand, goals, motives and objectives and the urgency of all of those.

I believe step one in successful corporate profiling is to understand and be able to identify institutions of management and institutions of assimilation.

Step two? Profile the needs, demands and wants, motives, goals and objectives of managerial institutions and use the knowledge and information against them for your benefit.

THE VALUE OF THE RECONSTRUCTION OF ENRON

Very, very few people (especially and particularly working-class outsiders) were supposed to be able to understand and/or reconstruct and/or even have the time to reconstruct Enron’s business plan and business model let alone obtain the ability to recognize other companies and corporate behavior patterns in the future repeating and copying the business model of the Enron of the 1990s.

Due to the amount, value and relevance of the material I had saved, I knew if anyone could I was one of those working (techie) class outsiders that probably had the information necessary and required already saved and archived along with the will, desire and drive and most importantly the time to reconstruct not only Enron’s business model and Enron’s business plan but similar and repeated Enron-style business plans throughout the past 6,000 years of history.

I knew I had enough knowledge, wherewithal and the information tools available to identify and profile the next Enron which was the whole point of the exercise from the start.

I knew there was a big (corrupt) game being played and I wanted to understand the big game because I had this feeling the big corrupt game could actually be understandable.

I was pretty sure I could do it and after more than ten years of work.. I did it.

And in 2008 I did it publicly for anyone.. who may be watching.. to witness.

Knowing all about the business plans and objectives of Enron Corp. in the 9 years leading up to the 2001 Enron “collapse” would have allowed a person to make a lot of money as Enron’s share value rose and and fell over the years and as Enron’s stock in 2000 reached just over $90.00 dollars per share.

The key would have been knowing the safest times to buy and the right times to sell between the years of 1992 to 2001.

That’s where my Enron-related knowledge and my websites come in because I’m certain I know when it is safe to buy and safe to sell during this Enron and I already have a pretty unique track record of predicting market debasements to prove it.

I am certain that advance notice and advance warning of the existence, progress and life of this Enron will be lucrative and profitable just as advance notice and warning of the previous Enron occurring in the 1990s would have been.. had that been possible.


The outsiders including myself and even the majority of Enron’s employees were left behind during the last Enron.

Don’t let yourself be left behind during this one and I’ll do my utmost to ensure that you won’t be left behind during this one.

September 15 2013 was the 5-year anniversary of the third reinhardt prediction.
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:09 pm

Via: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/ ... last-year/

Stephen A. Schwarzman, the head of the Blackstone Group, took home $452.7 million, also more than double what he made in the previous year.

...

A booming market creates challenges of its own for the industry. Private equity firms are collectively sitting on nearly $1.1 trillion of capital they must invest for clients — “dry powder” in Wall Street parlance — more even than they had before the crisis, according to the data provider Preqin. But if the buyout firms overpay, investment returns, and executive payouts, will fall, a conundrum weighing on the minds of the industry’s leaders.

“We can still survive and make clever investments in the environment we’re in now. However, you have to be careful,” Joseph Baratta, the head of private equity at Blackstone, said in an interview on Tuesday. “With the available credit at high levels, and the cost of it at historic lows, you can talk yourself into doing things that may not be prudent in terms of values you have to pay.”

Private equity firms, which buy companies and typically hold them for several years, ran into this problem in the years leading up to the 2008 crisis. But a number of investments that seemed doomed when the crash hit have been sold or taken public at rich valuations, thanks in part to clever management and financial engineering — and thanks as well to the soaring market.

Blackstone, the biggest of the firms, realized a $9.5 billion profit in December when it held an initial public stock offering for Hilton Worldwide Holdings, a hotel chain that struggled in the downturn. That gain was outpaced only by Apollo, which achieved a profit of roughly $10 billion from its investment in the chemical maker LyondellBasell Industries.

...

One private equity chief went so far as to publicly thank Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman until last month, whose program of extraordinary economic stimulus has helped push stocks higher, feeding the private equity machine.

“Thank you, Ben Bernanke. I saw him last Thursday, and I thanked him,” Mr. Schwarzman of Blackstone said during a conference in December. “The opportunity for us to be able to attract funds is very, very high.”
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby coffin_dodger » Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:00 pm

Stephen A. Schwarzman, the head of the Blackstone Group, took home $452.7 million, also more than double what he made in the previous year.

We can still survive and make clever investments in the environment we’re in now. However, you have to be careful...


That's not a blisteringly strong caveat when the boss has taken home $452.7 million, is it? LOL! It's become farcical.

What is it, in your opinion Wom, that these finance guys are privy to, that inclines them to think that this can end any other way than badly? Surely they must know when it implodes it will affect everyone? Or is it a case of making hay/fiddling whilst the USA burns?
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Apr 13, 2015 1:05 pm

coffin_dodger » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:00 pm wrote:
What is it, in your opinion Wom, that these finance guys are privy to, that inclines them to think that this can end any other way than badly? Surely they must know when it implodes it will affect everyone? Or is it a case of making hay/fiddling whilst the USA burns?


Their own spreadsheets! Not to sound glib, but they know they're performing when they speak to the public. This is why when a fund manager tries to give some inside baseball, smart investors will bitterly comment about how they're "talking their own book" -- something JPM and G$ are notorious for, as are Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian. There is absolutely no utility in sharing valuable or materially important investment information. None. But these guys have to say something, yeah?

This recent NYT story helps illustrate:

...over the past 10 years, the five pension funds have paid more than $2 billion in fees to money managers and have received virtually nothing in return…

Until now, Mr. Stringer said, the pension funds have reported the performance of many of their investments before taking the fees paid to money managers into account. After factoring in those fees, his staff found that they had dragged the overall returns $2.5 billion below expectations over the last 10 years.

Over the last 10 years, the return on those “public asset classes” has surpassed expectations by more than $2 billion, according to the comptroller’s analysis. But nearly all of that extra gain — about 97 percent — has been eaten up by management fees, leaving just $40 million for the retirees, it found.


1. This was the result of a calculation performed by people who, presumably, would have run those calculations prior to signing those contracts. You know, if that was their actual job, which it is not. Just a peek at how lazy and inept this culture really is: people who work hard in this field, do so quietly. They're not common.

2. This was for insanely vanilla investment strategies and asset classes, so it's not like there was some kind of labor-intensive hedging going on. Like, there was no insider advice / specialized management / pro tips going on here at all. Literally anyone holding an ETF over those ten years -- which is a counterfactual because few of them have existed that long, but still, the principle holds -- probably would have gotten better returns, and kept far, far, far more of their own profits.

3. So when apex predators say things will be fine, they're talking about their offices, their homes, their cars, their friends. And they're completely right.

“We asked a simple question: Are we getting value for the fees we’re paying to Wall Street?” Mr. Stringer said. “The answer, based on this 10-year analysis, is no.”
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby Elvis » Mon Apr 13, 2015 7:07 pm

for those of us with LCCs, inspiring stuff.


What's an LCC? :?:
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Apr 14, 2015 12:47 pm

Thank you for pointing out that typo.

LLC - Limited Liability Company/Corporation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability_company
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby Elvis » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:42 pm

Ah! I'm in one of those! (I'll propose that we parlay it into a major equity firm.)

I figured it was either a typo, or "Local C Compiler," which, whatever it does exactly, is far enough beyond my tech comprehension that it sounded mysteriously plausible.

Great thread, btw.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri Jan 22, 2016 10:56 pm

Delicious: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/track ... op-primary

Schwarzman: Sanders’ Rise ‘More Stunning’ Than GOP Primary

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s popularity “is almost more stunning than some of the stuff going on on the Republican side,” Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman says in interview with Bloomberg Television.

“What’s remarkable is the amount of anger, whether it’s on the Republican side or the Democratic side,” Schwarzman says in Davos, Switzerland.

"Bernie Sanders to me is almost more stunning than some of the stuff going on on the Republican side, How is that happening, why is that happening? What is the vein in America that is being tapped into across parties that’s made people so unhappy? That’s something you should spend some time on."


According to Naked Capitalism, he also told CNBC he'd choose Trump over Cruz.

I love how he treats the Bloomberg interviewer like an employee. "That's something you should spend some time on."
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby Grizzly » Tue Jan 26, 2016 6:16 pm

Rex wrote,

Delicious: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/track ... op-primary

Schwarzman: Sanders’ Rise ‘More Stunning’ Than GOP Primary

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s popularity “is almost more stunning than some of the stuff going on on the Republican side,” Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman says in interview with Bloomberg Television.

“What’s remarkable is the amount of anger, whether it’s on the Republican side or the Democratic side,” Schwarzman says in Davos, Switzerland.

"Bernie Sanders to me is almost more stunning than some of the stuff going on on the Republican side, How is that happening, why is that happening? What is the vein in America that is being tapped into across parties that’s made people so unhappy? That’s something you should spend some time on."



According to Naked Capitalism, he also told CNBC he'd choose Trump over Cruz.

I love how he treats the Bloomberg interviewer like an employee. "That's something you should spend some time on."



Maybe this is why?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-h ... than-ever/
Americans hate the U.S. government more than ever


A handful of industries are those "love to hate" types of businesses, such as cable-television companies and Internet service providers.

The federal government has joined the ranks of the bottom-of-the-barrel industries, according to a new survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Americans' satisfaction level in dealing with federal agencies --everything from Treasury to Homeland Security -- has fallen for a third consecutive year, reaching an eight-year low.

The declines represent some backsliding for the U.S. government, given that satisfaction saw some improvement in 2011 and 2012, which may have been the result of spending in the wake of the recession. While the comparison with private enterprise isn't apples to apples given the nature of government services, the findings have some implications for bureaucrats.

"Satisfaction is linked to broader goals in the political system that it wants to maximize, like confidence and trust," said Forrest Morgeson, director of research at the ACSI. "It's much more difficult to govern if the entire population dislikes you."

Although satisfaction is down for the federal government as a whole, the research found that consumers have vastly different views of specific agencies. The department that received the highest score was the Department of the Interior, which received a ranking of 75 points. That could reflect Americans' positive feelings toward national parks, which many visit while on vacation, Morgeson noted.

The lowest-ranked department may not be much of a surprise to taxpayers: Treasury, which received a score of just 55 points, or 20 points below the Department of the Interior. Treasury, as a reminder, oversees the IRS.

"If you think about the most contacted government agency, it'll be the IRS," Morgeson said. "If you think about what the IRS does, which is take money from citizens, you'll have low satisfaction."

Despite the overall lower score for the government, there were some signs of improvement in citizens' experiences, with the feds earning improved scores in customer service and information, which means many citizens believe agencies are delivering information in a clearer way than a year ago.

The government report is based on surveys with more than 2,000 people who were surveyed late last year.
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby cptmarginal » Fri Jan 29, 2016 2:03 am

Treading boldly: China's Ren builds global chemicals group - Mar 30, 2015

Ren Jianxin, the architect behind China National Chemical Corp's $8 billion bid for Italian tiremaker Pirelli PECI.MI, is rare among Chinese state company bosses: he gets the importance of markets and the limits of government assistance.

ChemChina's 57-year-old chairman, who agreed last week to buy the world's fifth-largest tiremaker, sees himself as an "industrialist" and not as a politician - a route taken by many senior state-enterprise officials.

Over three decades, Ren has led the restructuring of China's chemicals industry, organizing more than 100 firms under the ChemChina banner into six main operating divisions, producing everything from basic chemicals to fertilizers and silicones. Along the way, he also founded the Malan Noodle Co, a popular restaurant chain.

His biggest gambit, though, has been to globalize ChemChina through acquisitions aimed at bringing international brands and professional management to China. Since 2006, he has spent about $4.4 billion on firms in Australia, France, Norway and Israel. In 2007, Ren also sold a 20 percent stake in Bluestar, his specialty chemicals arm, to private equity firm Blackstone (BX.N) for $600 million.


https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys- ... -PR_325730

ChemChina is one of the largest chemical companies in China. It is 100% owned by the State Council of the People's Republic of China and supervised by China's State-owned Assets Supervision & Administration Commission. Its business includes agrochemicals, rubber products, specialty chemicals, industrial equipment and petrochemical processing.

"Moody's expectation of strong support from ChemChina to Bluestar is based on Bluestar's majority ownership by ChemChina, the subsidiary's important role in carrying out its parent's strategy of innovation and investment in specialty chemicals, and its significant contribution to the sales and earnings of ChemChina," says Gerwin Ho, a Moody's Vice President and Senior Analyst.

In 2014, Bluestar accounted for about 20% and 33% of ChemChina's consolidated revenue and EBITDA, respectively.

"Bluestar's fundamental credit profile is underpinned by the company's diversified chemical products, which include specialty chemicals," says Jiming Zou, a Moody's Assistant Vice President and Analyst, and also the Local Market Analyst for Bluestar.

Moody's points out that Bluestar's large number of products are used in sectors such as animal nutrition, electronics, construction, automotive, aerospace, clean energy, water treatment and packaging. The broad diversification in end-user markets results in stable revenues for Bluestar.

Moody's says that over the next few years, Bluestar will register good growth prospects, due to the good levels of domestic demand for animal nutrition, environmental science, and silicon products.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... iting-firm

Antony Leung, Blackstone Group LP’s Greater China chairman, is stepping down to become Nan Fung Group Holdings Ltd.’s chief executive officer after seven years at the U.S. asset management firm.

Leung, who turns 62 in January, will take charge of the Hong Kong property developer in February, the companies said in a joint statement today. He will become a senior adviser to New York-based Blackstone and a member of its International Advisory Board, according to the statement.

The former Hong Kong financial secretary joined Blackstone in 2007 and brokered a $3 billion investment by China’s sovereign wealth fund into the U.S. firm’s initial public offering the same year. Including dividends, China Investment Corp. is estimated to have profited about $300 million from the stake, according to people familiar with the matter and data compiled by Bloomberg.

“During his seven years with Blackstone, Antony has helped build some of our most important relationships in China,” Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman wrote in an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg News.

Leung helped Blackstone forge ties with CIC and raised money from state-backed institutional investors in China for the firm’s global funds. He oversees more than 120 Greater China employees for the firm, which has more than 220 staff members in the Asia-Pacific region.

Blackstone is in talks to sell Chiswick Park, a London office development that includes buildings leased to PepsiCo Inc. and Walt Disney Co., to CIC for about 800 million pounds ($1.3 billion), a person with knowledge of the matter said on Nov. 11. Blackstone gave CIC exclusive rights to review the asset, one of the people said.

CIC Investment

Blackstone agreed to sell a non-voting stake of less than 10 percent to CIC in May 2007 at about a 4.5 percent discount to the firm’s $31 IPO price. The private-equity firm has distributed $5.32 in dividends per share since its offering. Based on last week’s closing price of $27.56 and including the dividends, CIC’s shares are worth about $32.88 apiece, or 11 percent more than its entry price.

CIC’s press office didn’t immediately respond to a phone call or an e-mail seeking comment about Blackstone’s investment.

Leung, who sits on Blackstone’s executive committee, has helped bolster the company’s purchases of real estate assets in China. The firm is stepping up real estate investment in Asia, seeking to raise $4 billion for Blackstone’s maiden property fund focused on the region.

Largest Investment

Blackstone earlier this month agreed to buy a 40 percent stake in SCP Co., a Chinese shopping mall developer and operator, for about $400 million, a person with knowledge of the matter said at the time. It is the firm’s largest mall investment in Asia to date, said Chris Heady, head of Blackstone’s regional real estate business.

The company is also investing in property projects including distribution centers and a skyscraper in Shanghai, Schwarzman said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Oct. 24.

Blackstone hasn’t invested much in private equity in China since it established its presence in Asia in 2007 because the prices of those assets are too high, Leung said April 7. The firm named Michael Chae in December 2010 as the head of its Asian private equity business.

The firm purchased a 20 percent stake in China National BlueStar Group for as much as $600 million in October 2008, Blackstone’s first Chinese acquisition. That investment has yet to make a profit because of overcapacity in the chemical industry, a person familiar with the situation said.

Government Venture

Among Blackstone’s recent investments in China, Pactera Technology International Ltd. agreed last month to be bought in a transaction that values the Dalian-based provider of technology outsourcing services at $645 million.

Leung was Hong Kong’s financial secretary from May 2001 to July 2003. He joined Chase Manhattan Corp. in 1996 before it became JPMorgan Chase & Co., and left as Asia-Pacific chairman in 2001. Prior to that, he spent 23 years at Citicorp, which became Citigroup Inc.

Blackstone was the first global private-equity firm to set up a fund with the Chinese government, agreeing in August 2009 to a 5 billion yuan ($821 million) joint venture to target investments in Shanghai and neighboring areas.

Nan Fung was founded in 1954 by D.H. Chen, father of the company’s current Chairman Vivien Chen, according to today’s statement. The company owns residential, commercial and industrial properties.


Chiswick Park purchase sounds heavy-duty weird to me, but I suppose that's just par for the course.

CIC and Blackstone near agreement on London business park

China Investment Corporation is closing in on an acquisition of one of London’s largest office developments in what would be the highest value real estate purchase made by Beijing’s investment arm in Europe, underlining its growing ambition.

CIC is in exclusive negotiations with Blackstone, the US private equity group, over purchasing Chiswick Park, a 32-acre development in west London. The talks are advanced and the two parties could exchange on the deal before the end of November, according to people familiar with the process.

The deal, if it goes ahead, would mark only the second purchase made by CIC in the UK property market. The fund acquired Deutsche Bank’s £245m City of London headquarters last year, but has otherwise avoided the sort of mega-deals undertaken by the sovereign wealth arms of Singapore, Malaysia and Qatar.

Blackstone had originally marketed the sprawling business park, whose tenants include Pepsi, Swarovski, QVC and Tullow Oil, last year for about £800m.

The sale failed to attract the sufficiently high offers and was pulled, however. The private equity group instead refinanced the £600m of debt outstanding on the project and worked on constructing and leasing the last of 12 office blocks on the site.

CIC is discussing a price of between £650m and £800m, according to people familiar with the process. The sovereign wealth fund owns a stake in Blackstone, having invested $3bn into the private equity group before its initial public offering in 2007.

A sale of Chiswick Park would be the latest in a string of property disposals made by Blackstone this year. The group, which has grown to be among the world’s largest landlords by asset value, has either sold or floated billions of dollars worth of real estate since January as it takes advantage of rising property prices on both sides of the Atlantic.

Last week, Brixmor, the US shopping-centre landlord owned by Blackstone, raised $825m from its IPO. Blackstone is also selling a series of office developments in London, including its half stake in the Broadgate Estate in the City for $2.7bn to GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.

Blackstone bought the Richard Rogers-designed Chiswick Park complex from a consortium of Aberdeen Asset Management, Schroders and Stanhope at the start of 2011 for £480m. Office space on the site rents for about £45 per sq ft – about 20 per cent less than in the City of London.

A spokesperson for Blackstone declined to comment on the process. CIC could not be reached for comment.
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sat Jan 30, 2016 6:29 pm

Seeking Alpha is an open platform and thus a mixed bag at best, but MTI has a track record for sobriety.

Summary

* Blackstone has increased its assets under management (AUM) nearly four-fold since going public in 2007. Higher AUM will lead to lucrative management and performance fees in the future.

* At the end of the third quarter, Blackstone had $85 billion in capital available to invest. A distressed market should give BX opportunity to invest that capital.

* Blackstone reports Q4 earnings on January 28. I'm looking for how much of this dry powder BX has been able to invest, and how much new capital has been raised.

* What's the most important success factor in the private equity industry? Is it above-market investment returns? A skilled and connected research team? Industry contacts for identifying buyout opportunities and potential distressed investments?

All of these factors are important, and it's hard to imagine a private equity firm being successful without healthy returns, a skilled research desk, and strong business relationships. But the real defining line between successful private equity groups and the mediocre firms is access to investment capital.

Without a material amount of assets under management (AUM), it doesn't matter how good the firm is at generating positive returns, or how connected their investment team is. Assets Under Management is the lifeblood of private equity success, enabling the firm to charge management fees and to earn incentive allocations when investments pay off.

When it comes to growing AUM, there is one private equity group that has separated itself from the competition. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that since becoming a publicly traded company in 2007, The Blackstone Group (NYSE:BX) has increased assets under management by nearly four times. When the company last reported earnings, Blackstone had $334 billion under management.

Image


Their reported Q4 earnings were a "slump," though:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/busin ... .html?_r=0

Score one for Mr. Market.

The long-running campaign by the Blackstone Group’s chief executive, Stephen A. Schwarzman, to get investors to pile into his stock was hurt on Thursday when Blackstone reported a 70 percent decline in its core income for the fourth quarter.

With the stock market in broad retreat, the lucrative performance fees that Blackstone receives when it unloads various investments — and which are at the heart of the company’s business model — nearly vanished in the fourth quarter.

And as a result, its economic net income sank to $435 million in the fourth quarter from $1.4 billion in the quarter a year ago.

For the full year, Blackstone’s economic net income was $2.1 billion — down 51 percent from its record figure of $4.3 billion in 2014.

Blackstone’s stock, already down 41 percent from its recent high, took another dip on Thursday, losing as much as 5 percent before closing the day off about 2 percent.

Mr. Schwarzman has long contended that Blackstone should command a higher stock market price, like traditional asset managers BlackRock and T. Rowe Price, as opposed to the lower stock market valuation that investors now give it because of the volatility of its profits.

Even with the market turmoil, though, Blackstone reported a small increase in its assets under management, which rose slightly to $336.3 billion in the last three months — a period in which most large asset managers have been experiencing significant investment withdrawals.

In many ways, Blackstone’s fourth quarter highlighted the company’s unusual mix of pluses and minuses. The plunge in profits reveals how reliant it remains on its main private equity businesses, which reap lucrative performance fees when Blackstone can sell company and real estate stakes into a rising stock market.

For several years now, Mr. Schwarzman has been on a crusade of sorts, trying to persuade investors to look through the wild swings in the fees and focus more on the company’s extraordinary capacity to attract investor capital no matter the market conditions.

And to his point, Blackstone’s assets under management grew 16 percent for the year, to $336 billion — with $15 billion coming in the fourth quarter alone. For the year, the company raised $93 billion in capital, exceeding by a wide margin the total amount raised by competing alternative asset managers over this period.

Unlike other fund companies, Blackstone requires lockup periods of as much as 10 years — a point that Mr. Schwarzman makes incessantly when he pounds the table for his company.

That means that once the money comes to Blackstone, it stays for quite a while, generating fees. And these funds cannot be withdrawn, as has been the case at firms such as Pimco and Franklin Templeton, when markets or performance suffers.

In a conference call with investors on Thursday, Mr. Schwarzman, who never misses the opportunity to promote his company’s stock, was perhaps the most vocal he has ever been in declaring that Wall Street was not valuing Blackstone correctly.

“We remain highly profitable with strong growth and limited downside,” he said. “Right now you are getting Blackstone on sale.”

Mr. Schwarzman said that according to the company’s conservative assumptions, Blackstone stock should be trading between $100 and $125 a share as opposed to the current level of around $25.

Then, in a tone that was almost bitter, he said that if investors preferred a 2 percent return on treasuries compared with the 20 percent annual share price return that he expects Blackstone to deliver — well, they should go right ahead.

“I myself will not be selling my BX,” Mr. Schwarzman said, referring to the company’s stock ticker.

Nor should he, many analysts say. “Over the longer-term horizon, he is going to be right,” said Glenn Schorr, a longtime financial analyst with Evercore, an investment bank. “I don’t think it is up for debate that the business model is great and that the company will continue to grow. But these alternative managers are super volatile, and they suffer from whims of the market.”

The company’s fund-raising skills aside, the quarter did reveal quite starkly how a tough stock market environment can hurt immediate term profits.

The economic net income of the company’s two profit-driving machines sank — 77 percent for private equity and 72 percent for real estate. Smaller businesses also experienced measurable declines: Hedge funds fell 36 percent and distressed bonds dropped 87 percent.

The firm’s credit business, a fast-growing operation just a few years ago, was hit particularly hard by the turmoil in the junk bond markets.

On the call, Mr. Schwarzman was pressed by an analyst who asked why he did not authorize Blackstone to start buying back its own stock if he was so convinced that the company was undervalued.

“We get asked about stock buybacks a lot,” Mr. Schwarzman said. “But I like cash. And if we buy stock, we leverage ourselves up. There is nothing wrong with buying stock at this price — but we don’t want to compromise the growth of one of the greatest companies in the world.”
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Re: Blackstone Group

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun Jul 31, 2016 1:20 pm

Sheesh.

Video: Blackstone's Tom Hill: Time Has Come for Fiscal QE

VIA

Blackstone Group LP’s Tom Hill said governments should use fiscal policy to lift economic growth and inflation, joining a growing chorus of investors who are calling for more spending.

"The problem is demand, is spending,” Hill, the firm’s vice chairman, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV Tuesday. “We don’t have enough growth around the world and I think with fiscal QE you could actually get more demand.”

Investors including Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio and Janus Capital Group Inc.’s Bill Gross have said that central banks’ quantitative easing will need to be supplemented by some form of spending stimulus. Gross said last month that the next step may be so-called helicopter money, an idea conceived by the late economist Milton Friedman.

"What I’d like to do is change the name because it’s a buzz word, helicopter money,” said Hill, who’s also chief executive of Blackstone Alternative Asset Management. “Why don’t we call it fiscal QE. So what we’ve got to do is now start to to get the fiscal element in the equation.”


From Credit Suisse's PR tentacle:
https://www.thefinancialist.com/next-ce ... vestments/

In the years following the global financial crisis, the world’s leading economies have found relief through aggressive monetary policy. But with interest rates slashed to historic lows and central bank balance sheets significantly larger as a percent of GDP than they were before the financial crisis, policymakers will need alternatives to interest rate cuts and conventional quantitative easing when the next recession comes along. U.S. central bankers have cut real interest rates between four and five percentage points during previous recessions, but that would be a difficult feat to pull off in today’s world, with a fed funds rate between 0.25 percent and 0.5 percent.

One novel idea is what Credit Suisse analysts are calling fiscal QE, a not-entirely-literal catchphrase to describe expansionary fiscal policy in which central banks play an important role. Credit Suisse has identified several potential flavors of such, ranging from the very likely (coordinated monetary and fiscal policy) to the very difficult, including “helicopter money” policies, in which central banks either buy government bonds with very long maturities to finance government spending or lend to commercial banks at negative rates with a mandate that the banks then lend to consumers and corporations interest-free.

The most feasible form of fiscal QE would seem to be a process through which central bankers team up with policymakers outside their usual monetary policy stomping grounds to facilitate infrastructure spending. Public financial institutions, for example, could issue bonds to fund projects in areas where key infrastructure is sorely lacking. Central banks would buy those bonds and, barring any default, effectively fund stimulus without adding to government debt.

But there’s the rub: The strategy will only work if it is used to finance profitable infrastructure projects for which the bonds are not at risk of default. Because if they do, central bankers will find themselves will yet another thing to worry about when it comes to the quality of their own balance sheets. “If defaults are large enough, they might start to undermine the central bank’s capital position,” caution analysts with Credit Suisse’s Global Markets team.
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